


Careful Creatures

by flammable_heart



Series: CROWNED WITH TEETH [1]
Category: Charlie Cox - Fandom, Daredevil (TV), Loki (Marvel) - Fandom, Loki - Fandom, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Tom Hiddleston - Fandom
Genre: Actor Charlie Cox, Actor Tom Hiddleston, Angst, Cuddling & Snuggling, Explicit Language, F/M, Family Drama, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Gen, Good Loki (Marvel), Literal Sleeping Together, Loki (Marvel) Feels, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, M/M, Male Friendship, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:41:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28034814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flammable_heart/pseuds/flammable_heart
Summary: A confused Loki seeks out his friend Matt for some comfortable silence. He gets slightly more than he bargained for.
Relationships: Brunnhilde | Valkyrie & Loki (Marvel), Brunnhilde | Valkyrie/Loki (Marvel), Charlie Cox/Tom Hiddleston, Loki (Marvel)/Original Character(s), Loki/Daredevil, Loki/Matt Murdock, Loki/Original Female Character, Tom Hiddleston/Loki (Marvel)/Original Female Character(s)
Series: CROWNED WITH TEETH [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2088579
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4





	Careful Creatures

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Seiana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seiana/gifts).



> A gift for Seiana — written for @WorstLoki's Loki-themed secret Santa on Tumblr.

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_There's a place you go when you want to be alone—it reminds you of the little closet in your childhood bedroom, dark and quiet. But this place isn’t really a place; it’s a person. He’s quiet and his eyes search you with a fierceness that would scare you if there wasn’t so much truth in it. There are words for him that no longer live inside of you and you’ll curl up beside him and let him suck the warmth from your bones._

His feet scuff the worn carpet of their entryway, a bad habit he’d inherited from his brother all those years ago, and he looks into the cavernous space of their home. How many times has he been invited to stay? More than he wants to admit, since they’ve given up asking, his stall tactics and excuses fading off into vague acquiescence that one day he will, in fact, live here. He likes to pretend the reason he hasn’t moved yet is because he can’t leave Thor on his own. Thousands of years old and the man can’t live by himself; a sad excuse for the truth that he isn’t sure he can live in the same house as the girl with night sky eyes.

There are nights he drinks himself to sleep, hoping he’ll see the girl when he dreams. It’s a secret he’s kept for years, Matt finally dragging it out of him with cold fingers on his bony arm. And now here he is, seeking out the other boy when he knows no one else is around. His own sharp limbs fold in on themselves as he finds his friend on the couch, sitting too close, an elbow twisted under ribs, his skin brushing the soft fabric of Matt’s sweater.

This is what Loki needs—this quiet, unassuming boy and his secrets.

There is a moment when he thinks to ask where the girls have gone, but he errs on the side of keeping his mouth shut, the goosebumps on his skin ready to give him away.

This quiet; Matt likes it—a lie he's maintained since moving in. He's always thrived on silence, but has become accustomed to the background noise that comes with living with three other people. Someone always yelling at her computer, Loki and Val arguing loudly—it has become the soundtrack to his research. It’s hard to focus without it, hard to ignore the fact that strangely, for a moment, he is alone in the apartment.

He's been looking at the same page for over twenty minutes, losing track of the words the moment his fingers skim over them. He's read the words, 'The species of animal is yet to be identified...' for the third time when his space is invaded, Loki’s heat seeping into him like a salve. There was a time when he'd shied away from touch; here though, he’s quickly been trained out of that. His friends—needy and affectionate—found their way into his space far too often for him to bother pretending to mind.

"Val somehow convinced your girl to get into her car," he says, quietly reporting on the whereabouts of the second half of their whole. Matt can feel the humming of Loki’s chest as he considers those words, without actually saying anything. "Keep your phone on in case the hospital calls, mine's dead.” His eyes still on the newspaper as he speaks, though he’s no longer pretending to read it.

Loki presses his lips together, stifling a smirk as Matt speaks. It didn’t matter who was in the car with Val, they were likely to get killed. Had it been Loki, they might flip the car racing some other idiot down some New York side street; with anyone else it’s likely to be a fight between the two of them that derails things. Still, he glances at his phone. Nothing. The silence settles between them again and Loki inches down into the couch, his shoulders hunched slightly.

"I thought I was meant to be the quiet one.” Matt is still unsure how to deal with these quiet moments of secrecy. He doesn't know why Loki’s chosen him to unload on when Val is his best friend, when anyone else is clearly better equipped to offer advice. 

It’s an odd feeling, to be needed, by a god in particular.

Loki didn’t want to talk about the things these strange mortals conjured in their dreams and became unwilling victims to in waking life. They lived and breathed the truth of Earth, a place that had, for the better part of many people’s lives, been a living lie. A place that was living all on its own. There were too many people who just succumbed to it—who failed to see what was right in front of their faces because it was easier to overlook the obvious. But easy hadn’t ever gotten anyone anywhere.

Loki didn’t think he knew what easy was anymore.

Lately everything seemed so complicated—Val’s jagged edges cut him instead of slotting into place against his own and the girl with night sky eyes; she just was. An entity of her own, something he never seemed to have the right words for, a goddamned dream in her own right.

He didn’t want to talk about her either. Not really.

Legs stretched out, a soft sigh escaping pursed lips, brows bent, crooked in thought. Here he looked like a delicate flower, pale in the dim light, unassuming, unarmed. And that was the beauty of Loki Odinson; bowed head he was a lamb, bright eyes raised and he was a god in his own right, brimstone and fire. But now he is neither—simply a lost child, his head turned, eyes resting on a mole on Matt’s neck.

“I’m tired is all.” A boldface lie, though his voice is ragged enough to be mistaken for fatigue. His eyes tell the truth—some kind of hurt, whether self-inflicted or imposed by someone else.

_Tired_ , he says but there are so many things that can mean.

Matt understands weariness. It settles into his own bones like a cold chill and has him aching for the release that sleep provides. He understands sleepiness—the feeling that settles in during the evenings that the four of them stay up into the small hours of the morning pouring over a story.The sort of tired that presses against your eyelids trying to force them closed, that slurs your words into incomprehensible murmurs.

He doesn't think either of those are the sort of tired that Loki proclaims. He's heard him shouting loudly until five o'clock in the morning, he's seen him race cars down the streets of New York. He is not one to succumb to weariness nor sleep easily. 

There is something behind the simplicity of his words, something that screams there’s _more_. He can hear it better than anyone, can feel it in the stiffness of the other boy’s body next to him. Matt folds the newspaper in his hands carefully but proceeds to toss it on the floor carelessly. He’ll return to it later, when Loki has found himself again. For now, it can wait.

"Are you?" He asks simply, a question that allows Loki to tell him what he’s thinking or simply write him off. Matt works carefully—he doesn’t pry for answers. He’s not like Val, harassing and bothering until she’s told what she wants to know. He doesn’t mind waiting.

Tired—it’s an ache in Loki’s bones that he can’t shake, no matter how hard he tries. He sleeps for a day then stays awake for two but still the ache persists. His phone stays in his pocket even when it buzzes with a message because he has to keep his distance; he has to keep a lid on it, has to get his mind right. This ache is not a thing he can succumb to.

It wasn’t meant to be this way.

The sound of the newspaper startles him, and he doesn’t move as the other boy tosses it aside. Anyone else and this loaded silence would feel too heavy, but with Matt it’s almost tolerable. _Almost._ He nods slowly, careful not to upset the balance he’s set in himself between omitting the truth and flat out lying. He doesn’t like lying to his friends, but some things can’t be avoided.

"I wouldn't say this is the most comfortable place to sleep," Matt sighs after a moment, though his actions betray him. He's napped on this couch thousands of times, a dreamer falling into his dreams once he lets the painkillers set in, once the throbbing in his head subsides.

“If I used you as a pillow, it might not be so bad.” Loki says it, head tipped back, eyes on the ceiling but seeing absolutely nothing. He never really intended to sleep anyway. But part of him wants to try—wants to curl up next to someone and sleep without the threat of some darkness creeping in, or someone intruding, uninvited, but always welcome.

He always wants things he can’t have.

Without really moving he hooks a finger into Matt’s sweater, desperately needing an anchor before he floats away on the tide of shit that’s been clogging up his brain. “I keep thinking about moving in, but—I don’t know.” That isn’t what he wants to say, but here he is again, words stuck in the back of his throat, turning to ash before they can leave his mouth.

A smile quirks its way onto Matt’s lips with Loki’s response, despite the words that follow. “Not so bad for you, maybe,” he says, but he doesn’t mean it. There have been so many nights where he's slept on the couch, Val's head resting on his shoulder. He would suffer through days of stiff muscles for her to sleep through the night.

“I—I keep thinking about her…” That’s closer to it, the truth or something like it. And Loki doesn’t move, just closes his eyes against the red that’s suddenly blooming on his cheeks. This isn’t who he is—stuttering boy who can’t look at his friend, wrecked over a girl he knows he can’t have.

But Loki's words bring a breath of hope.

Without him, they are off-kilter. They’re not meant to be three—they don't balance, they tilt.Every conversation turns someone into a third wheel—her a mediator in his and Val's arguments, himself a victim to her and Val's words, Val missing during he and the girl's research. They are meant to be four.

(Actually, they were meant to be five.)

The pieces that break away frighten Matt, as though one day it will all float away and be gone. Thor is a pariah, uninvited. Loki is away. Val could easily drift away with people more exciting. The girl, despite her introversion, has left once before. 

Matt doesn't voice his concerns for fear of sounding too codependent. But they exist, whispers in the back of his head, stomach gnawing itself raw until someone curls up on the couch with him and unknowingly quells those thoughts.

“I'd like that,” Matt says, honestly. There are two puzzle pieces missing and perhaps one can fill enough of the void to make up for the other.

He studies Loki with his next words because this is unfamiliar territory. He’s known for a while—Loki and the girl are something different, something else outside of the group. They’re following a path leading somewhere, but neither of them are willing to take that first step.

Matt looks at his friend out of the corner of his eye, the humming in Loki’s body giving him away to the blind man, “You should say something to her.” He has to ignore the voice in his head that murmurs _hypocrite_. Pretending that Thor hadn't given him that same advice about Val a month ago. Pretending that he hasn't chosen to ignore it. "You aren't exactly discreet to begin with.”

Loki likes to think of them as a pentagram, five points of a star that burns brighter than the sun. Broken as they are in their own rights, together they are mended.

He is better when he’s with them—not the angry, hostile creature that Thor knows, he burns with a tempered light among these other stars. They fill in him the holes that his mother, his father, his brother have left.

(His heart is a sieve, but with them he is whole.)

It would serve to reason that living with them is an easy choice, but a slip-shod heart like his hangs on to the hurt, grips with bony fingers to the lifelines that fate has provided. There are better ways to live, but he’s teetering on the edge of them. And their little star has a broken point. He’s found it sticking out of the front of his chest, pushed straight through to his spine. Thor is another ache he can’t quit.

They always betray him in the end, the people he loves. They die, or leave and take tiny parts of him with them. They cut new holes in his chest for the blood to leak out of, that words cannot repair.

There are so many things he’d like to say, but he can’t find the right words—this is not the silver-tongued god of legend; this is a lost boy. And Matt makes it sound so easy, just saying something. Anything? No, they have to be the right words, in the right order. It’s something that's lost to him whenever she’s around. “What am I supposed to say to her hot shot?” Like he, the God of Lies, doesn’t know what to say.

Loki’s head lolls to the side, a finger stuck in the other boy’s ribs in response to the jab and a laugh at the tip of his tongue. “And what do you mean I’m not discreet?! I’m the definition of discreet.” Perhaps they’re both too blind to figure out their feelings, to admit they want what’s right in front of them, what’s always been right there.

Matt laughs at the other man's denial, shaking his head and flinching away slightly at the feeling of Loki’s bony finger in his side. “You act like a little boy pulling the pigtails of his crush,” he says, grinning. “I don't think she notices, though. It's only obvious to the rest of the world.” He knows, without having to say more, that this line of conversation is going nowhere. Loki will hold onto his feelings for her with a fierceness that could stave off any attackers, and she is equally as stubborn.

Loki stills as the moment passes, his lungs devoid of air, his chest aching at the simplicity he refuses to acknowledge. It could be so easy—like this, his fingers curled into Matt’s sweater, body curled into the other man without another thought. They don’t have to say anything else, Loki’s breathing slowing to match Matt’s calm heartbeat.

There is a moment when Matt thinks his friend might say something else, might reveal the deeper intentions of his aching heart, but when the other man’s nose brushes against his shoulder, Matt knows there will be no more conversation tonight. Not until she and Val return home and Loki returns to his congenially, barbed-tongued self. Shifting slightly, Matt lets his arm fall around Loki, fingers sliding into the coarse wool fabric of his sweater, paper forgotten for the warmth the other man provides.


End file.
